awards

John von Neumann Award

The John von Neumann Award is given by the students of the Rajk László College of Advanced Studies to scientists who made an outstanding contribution to the field of social sciences. The Awardees had a strong effect on the thoughts and the scientific education of the members of the college. The John von Neumann Award is the first and to date the only award given in Hungary which honors the international academic work in the field of economics. The Neumann Award is also unique in the sense that it is awarded by students. The awardee is selected in every year by the members of the college through a process of nomination and voting.
Every awardee gives a public speech at the Awarding Ceremony and also holds a seminar for the members of the college. The awardees, who are outstanding in their fields, contributes to the boosting of Hungarian scientific life with their speeches, interviews and conversations with the students.

How they can catch the current trend in their field and how they can predict the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences usually determine the status of young awards. From this perspect the Neumann award - despite its relatively young age - are really successful, before ten years of his Nobel Prize Oliver Williamson received the award. This is also the case for János Harsány who have been notified just before his Neumann award, then his winning of the Nobel Prize.

The Herbert Simon Award was established by the Rajk László College of Advanced Studies in 2004. The award is given to professionals whose academic work largely contributed to the solution of business questions and had a significant effect on the thinking of the students.
Every awardee gives a public speech at the Award Ceremony and also holds a seminar for the members of the college. Welcoming a worldwide appreciated professional in our college is always a great event: for this occasion the students make and translate a collection of the professors’ work, which are later published. This way we would like to contribute to the science and make the latest achievements accessible in Hungarian language too.

The prize is named after Herbert Simon who was a real polymath - a co-author of his, Richard Cyert said that he “is the one man in the world who comes closest to the ideal of Aristotle or a Renaissance man” ( The New York Times, 1978.11.17., 8.). His research work on decision-making processes within an organization was awarded by the Economic Nobel Prize in 1978. He achieved outstanding research results in the psychology of problem solving and in the computer simulation of the human creative processes. With the development of the theory of bounded rationality, he questioned one of the most basic assumptions of economics of his time, the existence of the rational economic man. During his visit in Hungary, in 1988 we could welcome him in the Rajk László College of Advanced Studies.
/ Written with the use of the prologue from the book James G. March: Organizational learning and decision-making (written by: András Nagy), 2005. Alinea Publisher-Rajk László College of Advanced Studies /

It is a custom, that both for the Herbert Simon Award and the John von Neumann Award we make a volume picks book from the publications and articles of the winner of the year. The compilation, the translation, the proofreading and the editing is done by current and former college members, and with the maintenance of Alinea Publisher, the books are released jointly from the college and the publisher. The book is the contribution of the college members, they carry out the volume editing, compilation, and any translation. In this form already 10 books out of our awardees’ work in Hungarian have been released.
With these published works our college aims to make the thoughts of these outstanding professors and scientists more accessible, to a wider range of people in our domestic academic and professional life.
The books can be bought from the webpage of Alinea Publisher, where there is also a possibility to peek in the books.